


Desiderium

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bees & Beekeeping, Depression, Masturbation, Other, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 13:13:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every bee has a greater function to serve and a place of its own in the beehouse; loneliness has no meaning for them because they are never alone, thought has no meaning to them because they share a common will, and desire has no meaning for them because they want for nothing. Sollux takes excellent care of his bees.</p>
<p>Sollux, for whom none of these things are true, does not take excellent care of himself. Caught in a bad frame of mind and incapable of relieving it, he watches pale porn and self-abuses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desiderium

**Author's Note:**

> At long last, something for the demographic that clamors for simultaneous troll beekeeping and self-castigation!

Sollux wasn’t bothered as much by the humming of his mainframe as he was by the restlessness humming through his legs like electricity, forcing him out of his chair. He wandered the cramped hive, opening the thermal hull to examine the contents for the twenty-sixth time - energy drinks, half a bottle of expired grubsauce, a full jar of chilled honey for his lusus - before closing it again, blinking the lights of his eyes at the bees in an attempt to elicit what little conversation they could make. They worked indefatigably at their beehouse, incapable of boredom, smoothing out the vacant cells from the insides and defragmenting the surface area of the wax to provide a cleaner medium.

_Ninety-six percent,_ they buzzed, responding to his query. Sollux washed his slim hands thoroughly in the nutritionblock sink before returning to the single block that made up the majority of his hive, removing the lid from a container of pollen on the desk and measuring out a half-cup. Spreading it neatly over a mirror and staring down at his own eyes above the yellowish dust, he evenly cut the pollen with a finely powdered protein and carbohydrate supplement and set it beside the nectar-filled feeder, ready for the worker bees to pack into the clean cells when their task was done.

No chat notifications disturbed the humming silence. Sollux’s computer had been silent for days, a natural result of blowing off all attempts at contact and failing to respond, of pushing away everyone who tried with casual rudeness; he idly formed graphs in his mind, the steady downward curve of his mood corresponding with the diminishing amount of attempts made to speak to him. He brushed the excess protein and carbohydrates into their container and lidded it tightly, dusting off the desk and mirror. The bees made a note of their dietary modifications. They would inscribe it in memory for reference when the time came for him to determine what they would need next.

Lacing the pollen and nectar were activities practiced only by the most experienced keepers. Some trolls liked to cut in powdered steroids or amphetamines to increase processing speed, but overclocking the bees often resulted in shortened lifespans and occasional colony collapse well before the optimal six-perigee turnover rate experienced by a healthy swarm. Six perigees, given the way even well-meaning trolls usually treated beehouse mainframes, was an optimistic projection. Even popular market nectars were often barely more than high-fructose grub syrup ‘fortified’ with chemicals to simulate the nutrition provided by unmodified amino acids, market pollen increasingly adulterated with inferior nutrient powder and containing only the vestiges of real pollen even prior to aftermarket cutting with other substances. Sollux set aside nearly every spare caegar to order pure pollens and nectars and resultantly maintained a reliable mainframe that worked consistently and faster than average, if not with the feverish speed of an overclocked rig.

“Here,” he said, letting two bees land on his extended index finger. “I’ll weigh you later.” They buzzed softly against the sensitive pads of his fingers, fuzzy bodies quivering with health and energy. One buzzed a cursory thanks for the pollen and he nodded before sending them away with a few quick blinks of his eyes, examining the recently-filled feeder with its burden of serine and proline-rich fluid.

Caring for the bees even outside of their value as an investment was something Sollux found therapeutic; pouring effort into making sure the beehouses were well-tended and the workers healthy let him focus on something other than the voices swelling in his head, the dull pain behind his eyes, the increasing torment of restlessness. As he watched the bees collect the pollen, carrying it to the cells to mix with honey, Sollux faced the crux of the issue. He wasn't hungrier or hornier or even more tired than usual, just lonely and dissatisfied. The bees needed him and were satisfying in their limited way, but they were no replacement for a real moirail.

Their computing power could do something for him, though.

* * *

His bookmarks had grown disordered, he noticed as he navigated the menu. Too many new ones had built up over time without being sorted into folders, and he made a mental note to take care of it later; the floor might be a mess of tangled wires, the whiteboard and walls a bicolored scrawl of code, but the computer at least should be well-controlled. Buried at the bottom of the 'maiinframe 2ecurity' folder was the bookmark he needed, labeled "antiiviiru2 2hiit." Not for the first time, he spared a hostile thought to the stupidity of camouflaging his porn when no one ever had the chance to go looking. “Fucking masterpiece of repression,” he told the bees, rubbing his eyes and sighing again as the monitor flooded with the colors and symbols of the quadrants, garishly signifying different site sections. “Hiding it from myself.”

With a resigned air he navigated to the pale pink-and-white menus of moirallegiance and found his favorite, a petite, stocky greenblood. Her hair stood out in long curls, her horns smooth, upward arcs buffed to a glossy shine. Nearly everyone in pale porn showed off well-sanded horns, buffed smooth to advertise the loving attention they received. Horncare was a pale kink all its own and one Sollux usually enjoyed, but not one he particularly felt like indulging this time. He touched one of his own horns self-consciously, the soft pads of his fingers grating across the small imperfections and burrs of overgrown chitin that were more realistic and less becoming than the waxed ideal on the screen, and frowned before a distracting murmur drew his attention back to the monitor.

“Yeah,” he told himself, trying to think about something other than his untended horns. “There.”

The greenblood lay comfortably on a pile of cushions, reaching up for the tall, slim rustblood leaning over her. She brushed a gentle hand over his forehead, cupping one of his cheeks before pulling him down by the shoulders, coaxing him into a stiff sitting position. He turned his face away, flushing a deep, rusty umber and smiling self-consciously as her voice rose and fell in indistinct whispers. Caressing one of his horns and gently pulling at his arm, she tugged him further into the cushions with a low, soothing hum; the tension melted from his frame, shoulders relaxing and body moving pliantly. Sollux, anxious and self-conscious even around trolls he knew were friendly, liked scenarios involving reluctance. He could identify, and a pale flush mounted to his cheeks as he absentmindedly wrapped his left hand around his right arm to mirror her gesture.

Her moirail typically played coy in their videos, both the voiced and indistinct variants, but every thoughtless motion he made betrayed trust. The exposure of his throat when he stretched out on the pillows, the way he relaxed and let his body go lax like a languid purrbeast when she pulled him closer, all of it signified a long-established moirallegiance that went beyond physical shooshes and paps. Sollux had sought out their work more than he cared to admit to himself. He liked them partially because their work was genuine and partly because it was so amateurish, a single camera on a tripod and a setting that was little more than four walls and a lavish cushion heap. Nervous and on-edge in even solitary emotional situations, Sollux licked his lips and furtively leaned closer to the screen as though protecting it from prying eyes.

Behind him, the bees finished their task and swarmed the pollen, the delicate filaments of their legs and bodies picking up the powder to carry back to their beehouse. The swarm was social enough to clean one another, clever enough to dance and communicate the need for other bees to brush off the pollen, and intelligent enough to work together and press it into the hive’s clean cells. Each bee’s delicate legs moved over the fuzz of the other bees, antennae seeking and wings vibrating as they moved against one another in a living, vibrating cluster, blunt heads pushing at the powder and moistening it with honey to sculpt and shape it. The bee bread would nourish the hive for weeks.

Sollux, hunched self-conscious and awkward over the desk, raised a thin hand to his own cheek and reluctantly nuzzled against it as the two trolls entangled their limbs in the heap of cushions. The male troll brushed his fingers through her hair and Sollux's bony fingers moved, touching the wiry curls at the back of his own head, slipping up to stroke an untended horn. The positions of the two were characteristically exaggerated in their vulnerability, her strong claws stroking his throat and his hands touching her polished horns with easy familiarity. The rustblood squirmed and nestled closer to her, the speakers filling Sollux’s hive with contented whirs and clicking chitters.

This much was fake, the sound of their vocalization augmented for viewers needing the extra auditory stimulus to go with the visual. In the absence of pheromone signals a wide variety of options appeared; some videos were clearly voiced and situational, appealing to trolls more into mentally participating than just watching. Sollux liked the indistinct ones - immersion in the pale scenarios forced an emotional involvement that made him recoil. The vicarious experience was increasingly less satisfying, though, and between the soft whirring chitters and their vulnerability Sollux had already begun aching to bare his throat to someone else, to bury his fingers in long hair and listen to someone else's worries. He stroked his own hair as he tilted his head back, forcing himself to be gentle and grimacing as the short strands slipped through his fingers. "Ugly,” he murmured with bared teeth, lifting his knees up to his chest and wrapping one arm around them. A brief wave of unhappiness passed through him, anxiety boiling in his thorax like acid. Jerking off would be easy in comparison to this, cycling the need to nurture and be nurtured through the unforgiving medium of his own self-hatred. He watched the screen as the two trolls began to whisper to one another in a way that sent a jealous shiver down his spine.

Behind Sollux, the bees continued their tasks. Not every bee worked to prepare the bee bread; some inscribed data, optimizing the storage in the defragmented cells to keep the processing up to speed. Their buzzing conveyed messages through the beehouse, every cell humming with activity as the insects swarmed in and out in their constant dance. Without the need to search for nutrition and without the drive to do anything more than work and infrequently reproduce, they could work with barely a rest and nothing that to more intelligent species would be considered a coherent train of thought; they operated as smoothly as any machine, humming gently. The beehouse was either happy or unhappy as a rule, and supplied with fresh pollen and nectar, the beehouse was decidedly happy.

Sollux held himself tighter and scratched gentle claws down his own throat, aching for physical contact. "Small fucking wonder," he mumbled, pressing his face against his own knees, "no one wants that with you.” He wondered how other trolls dealt with these feelings. He could easily imagine Aradia pampering herself, coming back exhausted from the ruins with dirt in her hair and on her hands and face, drawing a warm bath, talking herself through the stress. Doing those sorts of things for himself always felt stupid and excessive, but he liked to think that she would do them for herself - she was worth the effort. She would be a great moirail, all tangled hair and long, graceful horns that would always need attention, warm hands and an easy smile and the fortitude not to deal with bullshit. It was easy to imagine her in that role, soothing, but the idea felt disrespectful and filthy as it filtered through his mind. Grimacing, he banished it and stared at the screen.

The rustblood was visibly distressed, relating something in an inaudible murmur and moving restlessly in the cushion heap. Sollux looked away for a moment in embarrassment, watched the bees working at the nectar dispenser before looking back and letting his hands rest limply on the chair arms. Anyone would be fine, he thought, anyone desperate enough to put up with a skinny, whiny, high-maintenance moirail incapable of taking care of himself or opening up without feeling weak and ashamed. Anyone who could put up with all of that would be perfect, he thought bitterly, certain that it narrowed the number of takers to zero. He looked back at the screen, a one-two gutpunch of knowing how badly he wanted what he saw there and how unsuited he was to give or to receive it, and navigated away from that page to another.

“I’m going to buff your horns today,” a gentle voice whispered through the speakers. “You look stressed, is there anything you need to talk about? I’ll listen as long as you want. Sit back and relax-” Sollux grimaced and left the new page, closing the window entirely. The roleplay-style videos, always in a whisper and with sound effects designed to send shivers down the spine and evoke compliant relaxation in the same way as physical shooshing and papping, were too personal for him to enjoy or talk to. It opened him up to something fake, forced his defenses down to reveal embarrassing, awkward feelings he wanted to ignore. It was nothing like a real troll, and wasn’t that the problem? It was one thing to watch pailing, anyone could get off to a good pailing video even if it wasn’t nearly the same as having a real matesprit, but nothing replaced a moirail.

Sollux’s bees, long before his own species had developed hives and quadrants, had evolved to coexist in swarms. Each and every surviving bee had a place and a role to play in the beehouse, though their lives were short and filled with toil. The absence of individual thought made death irrelevant. So accustomed to togetherness that neither community nor loneliness meant anything to them, each bee worked toward the life of the swarm, and the life of the swarm was long enough that to each cluster of bees it was endless. It had existed at the beginning of their world and would last until the end. Optimization complete, the bees became idle while awaiting further commands.

Sollux pressed one tightly closed eye against his knee, moistening the denim there and sniffling wetly, self-hatred spilling violently into messy self-pity. It ended this way more than was probably healthy, a little porn to bring the venom to the surface and then awkward, painful, incomplete catharsis that drained a little corruption without getting at the root or cutting out anything broken or decayed. It was easier to look away from it than to engage it, easier to self-blame than to work through, and as soon as he took in a shaking breath an angry red spark danced up his left horn. “You are,” he said in a slow and deliberate voice, digging his fingershields into his legs and furious at himself for his unhappiness, “such a fucking _mess_ , and _no one_ wants you taking care of them because you’re like this, it’s pathetic, everyone else can talk themselves through it because everyone _else_ isn’t a broken defective waste of fucking oxygen and basic _resources_...”

He trailed off, swiped an angry hand across his eyes as his horns crackled with the sudden release of anger. “Why don’t you keep crying,” he snarled as blue and red sparks snapped around his head, “you worthless piece of shit, you deserve this. This is what you get, this is what you deserve, this is what you fucking _get_.” He paused, shaking. “This is what you get for not being hatched functional like every other wiggler that didn’t get culled, so why didn’t you? Why didn’t you just save everyone the grubshitting time? _Why didn’t you_?” he hissed, pushing hard at the pain without caring if it went away, relying on it to be there.

The abscess broke. Self-hatred coiled in his thorax and pulled tight, squeezing out the corruption to emulate catharsis and pushing cold poison through his veins. He paused again, let the sensation spread through his limbs and blossom thickly in his chest and throat like something he could cough up, like he could spit it out if he tried harder to expel it, if he were only better at letting things go. Sollux knew what moirallegiance was like, if only on the level of wanting to offer it to someone else - this was wrong, dysfunctional, but he looked at himself as though from a distance and saw no way to extend the feelings he imagined to what he saw slumped there. Exhaustion curled softly around him, ushering him back into himself with merciful gentleness. The idea became unimportant.

“This is what I get,” he said in a softer voice, unsatisfied but emotionally drained, hands uncurling and resting on the desk. After an uncertain moment, Sollux finally stood and wandered back to the nutritionblock. Opening the thermal hull, he looked inside for the twenty-seventh time - energy drinks, half a bottle of expired grubsauce, a full jar of chilled honey for his lusus - and drummed his fingers on the edge of the hull, sighing again. He picked up the honey and walked silently out the door.

The bees continued their work.


End file.
